1635: Music and Murder (64 page)

"How much more?"

"I can sell three packages tomorrow, if I have them."

Harold nodded. "Show me the money." He watched as Herr Lang counted the pfennigs to the table, one at a time . . . four, five, six . . . and slowly pushed them to Harold's side. His eyes narrowed; he pushed one of the coins back. "You suckered me once with a Halle pfennig, Lang. Not again. Good silver, or you get nothing."

"But that is all I have." Lang's nasal voice turned whiny, sending a shiver down Harold's spine.

"Shut up." Lang shut up. Baxter swept four of the pfennigs into his hand and dipped into a pocket of his bush jacket, then pulled bundles wrapped in none-too-clean scraps of cloth out of another of the jacket's many pockets. "Here's two sets. I'll be here tomorrow if you get more money." Lang looked like he wanted to argue or plead, but a glare from the up-timer made him gulp and grab the last two coins off the table top along with the bundle. "And Albret?" The down-timer froze. "You try that trick with a Halle coin again, and your prices will double." Lang jerked his head in a nod, then fled without another word.

Harold sniggered, then spat into the fireplace. He'd always found the fact that Lang meant long in English funny, since Herr Albret was one of the scrawniest people he'd ever met. Nothing about him was long, except maybe his hair and his nose. The thought of hair brought a reflexive scratch of his scalp. He drew his fingers away to look at the louse he'd caught, then cracked it between a fingernail and the table.

No one else looked like they were going to approach him, so Harold decided to call it a day. He drained the last few swallows of beer from his stein, then shoved himself to his feet and walked to the door. Before the Ring fell, Harold had always prided himself on being able to walk a straight line, even when he'd taken on a full load of booze. He could still do it, he thought as he went out the door.

****

Two men across the room watched Baxter leave.

"That him?"

"Yes."

****

Byron looked across the street as they were headed back to the watch station. A young woman held her coat open for a moment to hide the hand that beckoned to him. He nudged Gotthilf with his shoulder. "C'mon." They stepped across the street to meet her.

Byron knew she was a street walker, but what was her name . . . oh, yeah, Leonora. Pretty name, he thought. She'd been pretty at one time, in a pale-skinned sort of way; pretty enough to perhaps live up to her namesake. No longer, however. For all that she was young, there were lines graven in her face that spoke of pain and wastage, lines that turned her visage into a portrait of experience and suffering with eyes full of desolation that wouldn't have been out of place on a woman three times her age.

"Don't smile at me," she said. "Act angry, please." Byron caught on immediately, and pasted a dark frown on his face. Gotthilf took a moment longer to understand, then his expression turned stern.

"You reached out to us," Byron said, shaking his finger in her face for those who watched. "What for?"

"You look for a man in a green coat, one who sells things from the up-time?"

"You know we do." Gotthilf postured by grabbing her shoulder.

"His name is Albrecht Lang."

"Ah." The two men stored the name away.

"Do you want to know who he gets his wares from?" Leonora looked down as if being chastened.

Byron had to struggle to keep his expression in place. "If you know who it is, you bet."

"An up-timer named Harold Baxter."

"How do you know that?"

"Albrecht arranged for me to spend a night with Herr Baxter." Leonora wrapped her arms close around her chest and looked away. "He hurt me."

A flash of rage went through Byron. "So, why are you telling us?"

"You were nice to Annie. And someone needs to stop Baxter. He will kill one of us some day—us or others."

"You're not the only one he's hurt?"

"No."

He wanted to have a talk with Baxter, Byron decided.

"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Gotthilf asked.

"No."

"Okay." Byron started shaking his finger at her again. "Don't do anything stupid, but if you need protection, come to the watch house and tell them my name. We're going to walk off now, so look dejected."

The two men walked away from the streetwalker and resumed their journey to the watch house. "Another victim," Gotthilf muttered.

"Yeah." Byron shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. "You know, I'm not religious, not like my wife and sister-in-law, but the more time I spend in this job, the more it seems like the concept of original sin just has to be true. I mean, look at us." He gestured around. "Every society the world has recorded history about had prostitution. And for every streetwalker who gets rich as a high-level courtesan or finds a loving marriage, a thousand or more die, old before their time, used, abused, diseased and usually wrecked by alcohol or worse. If man is so good and so perfectable, why does this crap happen over and over and over?"

"You had them up-time?"

Byron gave a short bitter laugh. "Oh, yeah, we had them up-time. And we were still arguing about what to do about them. Almost four hundred years later, and we weren't doing any better than your time does."

The rest of the walk occurred in silence. Both men were alone in their thoughts, each in his own way contemplating the difference between what had been and what was now.

****

Gotthilf bounced into the office he shared with Byron. "Good morning!" he exclaimed.

Byron winced, and waved at a chair. "Sit, sit, and be quiet until I finish my coffee."

Gotthilf grinned and sat. Bill Reilly had explained to him not long ago that Byron was in no way a morning person, and if he wanted to preserve tender portions of his anatomy from being chewed upon, he shouldn't approach Byron in the morning until after he'd had at least one oversized mug of coffee. From the looks of it, Byron was almost done with his first mug.

It wasn't long before Byron set the empty mug down. "Stop smirking at me, and let's go see the boss."

Gotthilf followed him to Captain Reilly's office.

"Hey, Bill."

"Captain Reilly."

The captain looked up from whatever he was reading this time, and groaned theatrically. "Oh, no. Both of you at once. What's happened now? Is the Penguin loose in Magdeburg?"

Byron laughed. Gotthilf, on the other hand, was bewildered, and it showed. His partner caught his expression. "Never mind. More crazy American stuff. I'll explain later." He turned back to the captain. "Bill, you ever had anything to do with a guy named Harold Baxter in Grantville?"

"Baxter . . . Baxter . . . name sounds familiar, but I can't tell you why. Why are you asking?"

"Because it turns out there may be something to this silverware thing after all, and if there is, he's probably involved in it."

"Baxter . . . Baxter . . . Oh, yeah, now I remember. He's Raelene Baxter's brother—she got left up-time. He was married to Sharlyn Douglas for a while, too. I think he's Brandi Dobbs' dad. I remember the divorce . . . pretty nasty. Dad used to say he was a mean cuss, and there was apparently some pretty strong evidence that he was abusive to Sharlyn and Brandi. After that, he moved out of town and raised fighting dogs . . . mostly pit bulls. I'd forgotten he got caught up in the Ring of Fire. He must have been in town to buy something."

"You don't know any more than that?"

"Nope. If it's him, he's about the same age as my dad, so I didn't really know him. Just some of the stuff from the rumor mill, you know. But I remember Dad saying that if it ever came down to a no-holds-barred no-rules fight with anyone, Harold was the one man in town he wanted on his side, 'cause there wasn't anything he wouldn't do in a fight."

Gotthilf swallowed. This Herr Baxter did not sound like anyone he wanted to get involved with. He looked to Byron, and saw that his partner was sober-faced; no funny expressions at all.

"If we need to know more, who should we talk to?"

"Maybe Frank Jackson. Like I said, Baxter's from my dad's generation, so he ought to be around sixty years old. He's maybe just a little older than Frank, so Frank probably knows something more about him."

On their way out of the office, Gotthilf looked at Byron. "The Penguin?"

"Well, before I can tell you about the Penguin, we'll have to talk about Batman first."

"Batman?"
Fledermaus
?
Hieb
? All sorts of thoughts went through Gotthilf's mind.

"Batman. See, there's this comic series . . . "

Americans were crazy, Gotthilf decided yet again.

****

Baxter watched his last customer of the day walk away from his table. The backpack he'd brought with him was empty. Six settings of stainless steel, a couple good butchers' knives and two settings of Melmac had all sold. Those who bought from him knew better than to try and bargain any longer. Once he said his price, that was it. Early on a couple of guys had tried to bargain with him, but he'd showed them. Every time they argued, he raised the price. He snickered at the thought of their expressions.

He emptied his stein and waved for another. The thought ran through Baxter's head that he was getting into a rut. Maybe he needed to start looking for the dogs he had planned to buy. From the looks of it, he'd never have much more money than he had now. His stash of "unique up-time wares" was about to run out, and with Grantville bulging at the seams, he'd never be able to scrape up its like again. From what he could tell, even the garage sales in town were a mere shadow of what they used to be like. Seemed like whenever anything was offered for sale nowadays, down-timers would swoop down and carry it off, with only enough bargaining to salve their own pride. Nope, if he wanted to get his kennels started up, he'd have to get started, and right soon.

****

"Now?"

"No." Benedikt Schiffer looked to his younger brother Ebert—half-brother, actually—as the familiar thought ran through his mind that his brother wasn't much brighter than the boar he was named after. Of course, the thought continued, his mother was noted more for being soft and placid than for any great amount of mental strength. Benedikt had inherited their father's brains and his mother's hardness. "No, Eb, we need to wait a bit longer. Make friends with him first."

"Oh." Ebert turned his stein in his fingers. "I wish Lubbold hadn't gone and gotten himself killed."

"Me, too, Eb. And don't talk about him anymore."

"Why, Ben?"

"Because," Benedikt summoned all of his scant patience, "he did something bad. He killed a little girl, and if people find out we were his friends, they might get mad at us."

"Oh. Okay."

That American word was popping up everywhere these days, Benedikt thought, then turned his mind back to Lubbold Vogler. Vogler the mastermind, whose plan to link gangs in different cities so that stolen goods could be transported to different regions for resale died just as it was about to be put into effect. Benedikt had come from Hannover with the final agreement of their folk, which was all that was needed according to Vogler, only to find him dead. Killed in a fight with city watchmen led by up-timers. Called themselves
Polizei
now, whatever that was supposed to mean. But to have everything—all the plans, all the contacts, all the names—resident only in Vogler's mind meant that it was all fuel for the flames of Hell. If the city men hadn't shot Vogler, Benedikt might well have done it himself. He ground his teeth until his jaw ached.

So now, now Benedikt was trying to find something with which to salvage this trip, and he had stumbled onto Herr Baxter peddling bits and pieces of the up-time. He took another glance at his target out of the corner of his eye.

****

Gotthilf looked to Byron. "Is Herr Lang in sight?"

"No." Byron muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said, you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to find one man."

"Like you told me, if it was easy, they wouldn't need us." Gotthilf smiled.

"Oh, shut up."

****

Harold looked up as two men seated themselves across the table from him. "I don't know you." Harold was a direct man. He didn't see much sense in dancing around—just get to the matter at hand. "What do you want?"

"Ah, but you are well known, Herr Baxter. You are the man with the many up-time things—small things, but things that are so very useful that many people want."

"You want them?" More directness.

"Perhaps, Herr Baxter, perhaps. And there may be other things we want that you might be able to help us get. But I forget myself, talking business before introductions. I am Benedikt Schiffer and this is my brother Ebert."

"Harold Baxter." Harold decided there was nothing lost by being polite, especially since they already knew his name, but he dropped his hand into his pocket to grab his razor just in case. "You boys ain't from around here, are you?"

It appeared to Harold that it took the other man a moment to figure out what he'd said. "No, Herr Baxter, we are from Hannover."

"That's a pretty fair distance from here." Harold spit into the fire. "You all didn't come this far just to talk to me."

Benedikt waved at the waitress, and held up three fingers when she looked his way. "We came to conclude a business agreement, but by the time we got here, the merchant had died. We were seeking some other opportunity, when we happened to see you making your deals with the local peddlers. Your wares would be very welcome in Hannover, so we are interested in buying as much as we can."

Harold's mind began racing. These guys weren't from here . . . they might pay a premium for what stock he had left. There were bits and pieces of stainless and a couple of knives still in the footlocker he had stored at the goldsmith's, but the prize was a full set of stainless and two sets of Melmac that he hadn't had to break up yet. He should be able to hold them up for good money. Maybe his kennel was closer than he thought.

"Well," Harold drew the word out, "we might be able to do business, depending on what you want and how much you want to pay."